Santa Barbara, Calif.   —   2011-01-19   —  

Nancy Pearl is Librarian of the Year

Library Journal has announced Nancy Pearl as the 2011 Librarian of the Year. Pearl is the former Director of the Washington Center for the Book and has received the Women's National Book Association Award, American Library Association's (ALA) Allie Beth Martin Award, Washington Humanities Award, and the Louis Shores Greenwood Publishing Group Award. She was also named Library Journal's Fiction Reviewer of the Year in 1998.

Pearl has written a set of books in Libraries Unlimited's Genreflecting Advisory Series. The most recent, Now Read This III: A Guide to Mainstream Fiction (2010), briefly describes and organizes approximately 500 of the most popular and current contemporary, mainstream fiction titles according to character, setting, language, and story.

A reception honoring Pearl was held on Friday, January 7, 2011, during ALA's Midwinter Conference in San Diego, California. For more information on the award, please visit Library Journal's website. For a full biography of Nancy Pearl, please visit her official website.

Janice Welburn is Academic/Research Librarian of the Year

Janice Welburn, Libraries Unlimited author and dean of university libraries at Marquette University, is the 2011 Association of College and Research Libraries' (ACRL) Academic/Research Librarian of the Year. The award honors an outstanding member of the library profession who has made a significant contribution to academic/research librarianship and library development.

Welburn is the author of Human Resource Management in Today's Academic Library: Meeting Challenges and Creating Opportunities (2004). The book provides a comprehensive look at issues that shape the nature of Human Resources in academic libraries.

For more information on this award, please visit the ACRL website.

Irene Tomaszewski Wins Lech Walesa Media Award

Irene Tomaszewski, co-author of Code Name: Zegota: Rescuing Jews in Occupied Poland, 1942-1945: The Most Dangerous Conspiracy in Wartime Europe (Praeger, 2010) is the recipient of this year's Lech Walesa Media Award. The award, which has recognized Tomaszewski for her "dissemination of information about Poland, Polish history and culture in the mainstream media," is given out by the American Institute of Polish Culture. The award will be presented by Lech Walesa during the Institute's 39^th Annual Polonaise Ball on February 5, 2011.

Code Name: Zegota is an inspiring story of unarmed civilians of all ages who took on the Gestapo, the SS, and the Wehrmacht—and outwitted them at least 20,000 times.

Karen Friedman is Named an Enterprising Woman of the Year

Enterprising Women has named Karen Friedman, president of Karen Friedman Enterprises, Inc. a 2011 winner of the Enterprising Women of the Year Award. Karen is the author of Shut Up and Say Something: Business Communication Strategies to Overcome Challenges and Influence Listeners (Praeger, 2010). This book presents no-nonsense strategies to turn ordinary business communicators into powerful speakers who can overcome challenges and influence important listeners to get results.